


Coda: A Parting Gift

by jolly_utter



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Ending, F/M, Languages and Linguistics, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 17:33:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20679230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolly_utter/pseuds/jolly_utter
Summary: One day, when the winter darkness had wrapped itself around them once more, Silna returned. In the end, survival won out over tradition, and when her people saw her swollen belly and the exhaustion in her face, they made her welcome, knowing she would not survive unaided in her present state.





	Coda: A Parting Gift

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place around the ending of the show. I attemped to inject a slight measure of hope therein, and to explain who the child is at Francis's side in the final shot. 
> 
> I wanted to translate all the dialogue that should be in Inuktut, but I realised that was a far greater undertaking than my limited language skills were prepared for, so I thought I would forego translation entirely rather than make a hash of it.
> 
> Thank you to my lovely editor who made many improvements and curtailed my Victorian tendency towards lengthy sentences. All further errors are mine.
> 
> Posted today in honour of Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier's 223rd birthday!

The first few days after he woke were the worst. He knew nothing but an exhausting blur of horrors and the stabbing pain where his hand had been as he confronted the scattered carnage of broken bodies, ragged tents and the detritus of civilization they had dragged with them. All that remained of the expedition, all useless in the end. The Netsilik gathered the few metal implements they could make use of. Francis forced himself to sort through the belongings left behind, gathering a few personal items that might be sent back to the families in some way. James’s journal, and Jopson’s pocket watch, he kept. The bodies were laid out as respectfully as possible, covered in whatever else remained, and burned. All except Goodsir- Silna dragged his body away on her sledge, rattling over the shifting stones, to bury him in the manner of her people. Francis made a bundle of all his effects with the thought of giving them to her later. As they trudged away, back to the Netsilik camp, the smoke lingered as a dirty smudge on the horizon.

The weeks after that were the next worst. Silna was gone, and Francis was alone among strangers, whose care for him was a guilty burden which, on top of all he already carried, was nearly unbearable. He had nothing to offer them, and the expedition he had been part of had brought only chaos and violence to their land. In their quiet gazes and matter of fact words he read a judgement of his whole people, who had been left physically destroyed with their most vile and carnal urges laid bare by these environs; the same in which the native people lived out their days peaceful and unperturbed. What a laughable thought, that smug fat gentlemen in England would call them the savages. Francis was weak, his stump still raw and aching, his stomach slowly learning what it was to be full again. He had little energy, but nightmares plagued him when he slept. As soon as his weary eyelids dropped, he saw a procession of frozen faces and bloody flesh, and struggled with his feet mired in ice towards them. He called their names and reached for them and couldn’t save a single one. He would have turned back to the drink if there were any to be had. 

The following months were the hardest after that. Francis—Aglooka, now—tried to learn the skills he would need to survive in his new life, struggling to pick up a lifetime’s worth of knowledge and to shed another’s that was useless to him now. He was clumsy, one-handed, but patient and doggedly determined. This was all the remained for him, and there was small, quiet satisfaction to be had in the first seal he caught after a long wait by its hole. He was finally of use once more, and if all he could do for the rest of his days was help feed and warm the people who had taken him in, that would be enough. His command of the language was improving rapidly, and the faces around the fire in the evening grew familiar. It was not the camaraderie of the wardroom, but he could sit and listen to stories, catching maybe half the tale, with his stomach full and the aurora flickering in the sky, and forget who he was for long enough to feel something like contentment.

One day, when the winter darkness had wrapped itself around them once more, Silna returned. In the end, survival won out over tradition, and when her people saw her swollen belly and the exhaustion in her face, they made her welcome, knowing she would not survive unaided in her present state. She was fed and wrapped in new furs, and when she had recovered her strength, she sought out Francis’s ice house, dragging her small bundle of possessions in with her. Her face was as strong and inscrutable as he remembered, but wearier, too.

“Is it Goodsir’s?” He asked softly, indicating her condition.

She nodded gravely, watching him.

“He was a truly good man. One of the very best.”

The English felt rusty on his tongue, but seeing her had brought back some vestige of who he once was, the pain welling up- like an old wound reopening, he thought bitterly.

It did not even occur to him until later that the child was illegitimate, the product of an unsanctioned union. He knew they had cared for one another and that was enough. He might have questioned when they had even found time and privacy for such an act, but he had the memory of James pressed against him in stolen moments, urgent hands and lips conveying all the warmth there was to be had in this frozen land. It had helped sustain them until they were too exhausted, too pained, to do anything but hold each other close in a draughty tent. All that had kept any of them going in the end was love, he thought, and that had not been enough to save them.

Francis brought Silna the things of Goodsir’s he had saved, and together they went through them, in their small cradle of golden light with the Arctic winds howling outside. He told her what each item was—a medical text, notes on undersea life—and she pressed each in her hands as if it still contained some vestige of the man who had owned them. Then something caught Francis’s eye, a sheaf of papers in the doctor’s neat hand: the start of his dictionary. The phonetic alphabet was spelled out at the beginning and easy enough to understand. All at once, Francis felt a lump rise in his throat as one of his many long-quelled emotions stirred- half joy, half pain- and upon examination he realised it was hope. He caught at Silna’s sleeve and she narrowed her eyes at the interruption and his sudden agitation. He stubbed his finger on the page, willing her to understand as he pointed at the symbols and made their sounds. He rummaged in his things for the one pencil he had saved. On the back of a sheet, he spelled his name, sounding it out.

“A- gl- oo- k- a”

Silna’s eyes lit up. He traced out her name next, then proffered the pencil. He saw her lips move, soundlessly forming the word as she clumsily copied the shapes. They had no written language here, he knew, but despite the foreignness of the entire concept, she had clearly grasped it. She must have seen Goodsir at work and understood; he probably was the first to explain the system to her. Now, it was his parting gift. If Silna could learn to write, she could have her voice back. She must have realised this, for she reached out and squeezed his hand, bestowing one of her rare smiles. Then her eyes widened in shock and she clapped a hand to her belly.

“Are you all right?” Francis asked, suddenly fearful. 

In response, she drew his hand to her, under the furs to press against the swollen curve of her flesh, warm through but a single layer of material. He opened his mouth to protest at the unwarranted intimacy, but she held him there until he felt it- a small kick against his outstretched palm. He looked up at her in wonderment, before his eyes filled with tears.

“I wish Henry could see you now. He should have been here, not me. He would be so very proud.”

Silna stayed with him, there, through the rest of her confinement, and aside from the women checking on her, they were mostly left alone: two crippled outcasts in their cave of ice. There had always been such an imbalance in their positions, and Francis felt keenly that he had not treated her well. Now, however, it seemed that all the horrors they had seen were a peculiar bond. They both woke in the night with the names of the dead on their lips and a pain fit to sear the throat choking them, too much even for tears. To be able to reach out and grasp one another’s hands in the darkness was a blessing. The knowledge of the life growing inside Silna was a comfort to Francis, a sign that not all had perished with his men.

Every day, Silna practiced writing, frowning in concentration and carefully sharpening the pencil with the knife that had so grievously wounded both of them. The first sentence she wrote was a question and a demand:

“How did he die?”

Francis didn’t have to ask who. He knew the sight of Goodsir’s carved up corpse must haunt her as it did him, more so. He knew better than to try to spare her feelings. He told her of Goodsir’s courage at the last, his efforts to thwart the mutineers by the only tool left to him. Silna nodded, her eyes full of tears.

“He could not live knowing that men are not good,” she slowly traced out.

“You’re right,” Francis said aloud. “He held out faith for so long, and we kept letting him down.”

“You did not.” 

Francis hadn’t known how much he needed to be told that.

Reluctantly, Francis ripped the unused pages out of the back of James’s journal for Silna to write on. He hadn’t read it, wasn’t sure he could bear to, but he had been unable to part with it either. He tried not to see how weak and scrawling the last few pages were, in contrast the neat and elegant hand in which the journal began. In contrast, Silna’s writing was fast becoming more confident. She referred to the alphabet less frequently, and made some symbols of her own, sounds that Goodsir had not accounted for. She still used signs and gestures for everyday communication, but she wrote out her thoughts, her memories, the story of her life before it was all upended. When she showed Francis, he felt like a slow schoolboy, struggling through the translation at a much slower pace. He would sound out a word on the page, have its meaning shift into English in his mind, and be hopelessly muddled by the time he reached the end of the phrase, languages and letters jumbling together. 

Silna saw his frustration and smiling, reached for the pencil.

“Learn by teaching,” she wrote. “You can teach the child.”

The corners of Francis’s eyes wrinkled up and he felt he hadn’t smiled so broadly in a very long time.

They called the boy Igisulik: curly hair.


End file.
